Biz & IT —

Does Windows 8 succeed as a true tablet operating system?

When it's good, it's very, very good. When it's bad...

Among desktop users, Windows 8's user interface has been met with a lukewarm reception, inspiring a recurring refrain: "Why have they put a tablet interface on my desktop system?" That Windows 8 is actually suitable for and effective on touch-driven tablets has been almost taken for granted.

A successful entry into the tablet market demands a strong touch interface. The competition from the iPad is stiff, and the iPad's iOS has five years of user interface refinement under its belt. Has Microsoft really gotten it right with Windows 8 and touch?

Kinda.

Touch is baked into the basic Windows 8 interface, and it shows up in the core, universal interactions that bring up the operating system's user interface: swipes from the right screen edge bring up the charms bar, those from the left edge switch apps or bring up the task switcher, and swipes from top or bottom bring up each application's toolbar-style app bar.

As concerned as I am about the comparable mechanisms for mouse and keyboard users, these touch gestures work really well. Task switching in particular is great; flicking back and forth between apps is effortless. It makes the original iPad, where you either had to bounce between apps via the home screen, or double tap the home button to select from a "taskbar," look like something from a bygone era. (Though as of iOS 5, Apple added some four and five finger gestures to allow navigation without the button.)

Windows 8 at its heart is a solid, well designed, touch-friendly operating system. Microsoft has shown that once it sets out to produce a touch-friendly operating system, it can do so well, which makes you wonder why it took the company so long.

While Microsoft has been trying to crack the tablet market for almost twenty years now, Windows 8 is in some ways a version 1 product. It's the first time Microsoft has actually built a tablet operating system with a genuine attempt at a touch interface (compared to previous efforts that attempted to make tablet users wrestle with the traditional desktop interface), and only the second time that Microsoft has built a genuine touch interface at all (the first being Windows Phone).

Unfortunately, all of this excellent touch work hasn't gone quite far enough—even tablet users who want to live their lives wholly in Metro are in for some pain.

Touch-first design

The overall experience of using Metro on a touch machine is a pleasing one. The bold design aesthetic forms a natural home for controls that are comfortably finger-sized, and though the apps we have available at the moment are all quite limited in their capabilities, Windows 8 nails the basic touch interactions. And the way the operating system uses touch gets more interesting when you look at the details.

The touch parts of Windows 8 feel touch native in a way that I don't think anything else quite manages. I don't mean any disservice to Apple's engineers; Apple has plainly done more than anyone else to make touch devices mainstream, and Apple's vocabulary of swiping, panning, and two finger zooming has become the industry standard. But iOS has some bits and pieces, like that hardware home button, that aren't touch-based or aren't quite comfortable on touch systems. I don't get the same feeling on Windows 8.

For example, consider the "long press" gesture. "Long press" (where instead of tapping on something you press it for a second or two) is a long-standing feature of touch interfaces. Microsoft's many attempts at a stylus-driven touch interface used it to emulate right click. iOS, Android, and Windows Phone all use it.

But "long press" is annoying to use. There's no fluidity to it. You just have to stop what you're doing and wait—one second, two seconds—for the thing to register. It doesn't matter how swift and fluent you are with the rest of the gestures, everything's on hold while you long press. It's a hangover from the early touch interfaces where the designers were trying to mimic the mouse; since the mouse has two buttons, they needed to distinguish between "left click" and "right click" in tap contexts.

Staying fluid

Windows 8 supports long press in various places, but Microsoft has made a deliberate effort not to need it: regular, everyday tasks should all be possible without long pressing. iOS, for example, uses long press to switch its home screen user interface, Springboard, from its normal app launcher mode into "icons jiggling around" mode, where you can drag the icons around, move them into folders, and switch them between screens.

The Start screen in Windows 8 supports essentially the same operations—you can move the live tiles between groups, get rid of them entirely, or otherwise organize them as you see fit. But instead of using clumsy long presses to allow this organization, Windows 8 uses nudges and drags. Flick a live tile up or down, and it will gain a selection box, providing the ability to remove it or change its behavior in some way. (For example, you can turn off its live updates, or switch between single and double-width tiles.) Want to pick up a tile to move around? Just drag it up (or down) and it comes loose.

We see a similar attitude toward the often awkward task of selecting text to copy or paste it. This is an area where long presses are typical, along with other mechanisms such as magnifying glasses to make fine manipulations easier. Windows 8 does away with the long press in favor of something that should feel a bit more direct: you just tap.

The system is a minor evolution of the mechanism used in Windows Phone. Tap in a piece of selectable text and a kind of inverted lollipop appears. Drag the lollipop left or right and it grows to produce another lollipop, with the text between the two lollies being selected. Tap the blob on the end of the stick and cut and paste options appear. If you have something on the clipboard already, tapping the blob also gives you a paste option.

Copy and paste with touch.

(Where tapping already has a meaning, such as visiting links in webpages, Windows 8 still supports long pressing to enable highlighting and copying text.)

None of this is revolutionary. The text selection system in Android is very similar, but it's initiated with a long press (some of the time, at least; editable text fields don't need the long press).

On their own, these are all small details, but together they mean that the Windows 8 touch interface goes as fast as I can control it, without the speed bumps other platforms have.

Task switching in particular is great; flicking back and forth between apps is effortless. It makes the iPad, where you either have to bounce between apps via the home screen, or double tap the home button to select from a "taskbar," look like something from a bygone era.

but with multitouch gestures that have been available since the introduction of iOS5, you can do a 5-finger swipe left and right to switch between running apps. Not so bygone now eh?

Imagine that you want to add a language or keyboard layout. Same thing happens; the touch settings app has a link, and tapping that link unceremoniously dumps you in the desktop Language Control Panel.

This is why people get pissed off with Microsoft, they never learn - they do lots of great stuff and ruin it with the finer details. I see certain parts of Metro that are genuinely innovative and make iOS look dated, but Apple would never release an OS with a touch interface that dumps you out to the desktop, even if you're on a tablet device.

This was looking great! Until page 4. Just the way it handles the keyboard tells me to stay away. If I want a tablet where the keyboard prevents me from using it for "real" desktop apps, I would have bought an iPad.

You'd have thought the new Office version would be a huge priority for Windows 8 compatibility, but the whole thing sounds like it's going to be a disaster. Microsoft is going to end up having to rely on third parties to make good Metro office apps, while the ARM surface users are just plain stuffed?

I suppose Microsoft might have an Office update ready to address this, and the rudimentary touch support we see now is actually just for users that have switched into desktop mode, for example if the Metro version lacks some features?

I dunno, I've really tried to use Windows 8 but while I like Metro in theory, in practise I've found nothing to like about it for both touch and desktop use.

No really, please do. Otherwise you sound like a fanboi who nitpicks the first thing he finds slightly offensive to the Apple crowd.

<quote>Task switching in particular is great; flicking back and forth between apps is effortless. It makes the iPad, where you either have to bounce between apps via the home screen, or double tap the home button to select from a "taskbar," look like something from a bygone era.</quote>

GordonBX wrote:

but with multitouch gestures that have been available since the introduction of iOS5, you can do a 5-finger swipe left and right to switch between running apps. Not so bygone now eh?

Oh, that's a real zinger there... You really showed the author in that one. So basically you're saying palming the entire screen to move to a recently used app is a step in the right direction? Seems kinda clumsy to me. What about a foot swipe?

A lot of people are forgetting (maybe not forgetting but failing to mention) the great media server capabilities that Microsoft is baking into Win8. And upgrading for only $40 gets you the equivalent of the Win8 Ultimate (Win8 Pro in this case), I say this is a big win. I never thought I was going to be able to get 2 licenses of Windows for under $100.

If there's one thing MS is good at it's abandoning their failures. If Win 8 bombs they'll return to their old format or split the touch OS from the desktop OS.

Win8 bombing will probably segment the market a lot more than it is now though.

How much of Vista was abandoned in 7?

Good point. They just slapped lipstick on the pig and called it a day, and slowly cleaned up the internal bloat. No MS OS since WinXP has survived on one of my systems for more than an hour after unboxing. And I have a fair number of touch screen enabled devices,... I can install and completely reconfigure X/K/L/Ubuntu as a touch interface GUI faster (25 min. install + add'l 20 min.) than I could get any WinOS installed (minimum 2.75 hrs. just to install, with service packs, etc., let alone make useable).... If MS wants to compete in the mobile space, they have to be able to get out of their own way. That means lighter OS, better performance. and more ability to configure.

I've been using a Win8 tablet since the BUILD conference and I agree that it is okay but not great. The whole swipe to the right interface is annoying because sometimes it takes a long time to browse the contents of the app. Scrolling so much to the right sometimes makes my eyes spin a bit. Sure I can use semantic zoom but semantic zoom is only good if you understand the structure of the application (e.g. first News then Sports then whatever). iOS (at least the iPhone) does this a lot better by just having buttons at the bottom of the screen to control navigation so I know immediately what my available categories are.

Also there are other things that are missing that make things a bit more annoying. One example is Next/Prev buttons on the keyboard. Another example is no information in the Windows Store about the updates I am installing. And as the author mentioned, they dropped the ball by not putting all important settings in Control Panel.

I'm wondering whether the suggestions from the touch keyboard are sensitive to character count. In Windows Phone, it can become either hilarious or sad when you forget a character or type one character too much, then see the suggestions go haywire. So sometime, I type a word wrong by one character and WP is utterly unable to suggest me the right word, even if about every other spellchecker is perfectly able to do so.

So what happens with suggestions when you miss or type one character to much in Windows 8? Does it suggest you every fantasy but the word you want to type or is it able to pick the right word?

I rather like some of the tablet Multitouch gestures in Windows RT. On the iPad, the two three and four finger gestures have made things much more efficient for the experienced user. Task switching is especially nice as is the grasp gesture to return to the Springboard.

I think a five finger spread gesture to display an expose-like mission control for recent apps would be better but I am willing to wait. I also love three finger selection and two finger cursor movement that has appeared in some Apple made apps. Press and hold to display the magnifying loupe isn't precise enough on either the iPad or the iPhone. Certain third party apps like TextKraft EN have some wonderful innovations that should be adopted OS-wide.

Although I think extending touch to the desktop monitor instead of a horizontal surface is a strategic error and ergonomic mistake on Microsoft's part, it isn't a fatal one. The Metro design language is pleasant to look at even at the expense of the developer's brand identity. If they can get a Windows RT tablet to $200 like the Nexus7, I'd totally be willing to try it.

I liked what Microsoft did with the XBox and Kinect, and their mice are first-rate. I hope they can solve their management issues and make proper use of all their awesome IP.

You'd have thought the new Office version would be a huge priority for Windows 8 compatibility, but the whole thing sounds like it's going to be a disaster. Microsoft is going to end up having to rely on third parties to make good Metro office apps, while the ARM surface users are just plain stuffed?

I suppose Microsoft might have an Office update ready to address this, and the rudimentary touch support we see now is actually just for users that have switched into desktop mode, for example if the Metro version lacks some features?

I dunno, I've really tried to use Windows 8 but while I like Metro in theory, in practise I've found nothing to like about it for both touch and desktop use.

The Office team's been crapping on Windows tablet dreams for over a decade (eg there were some trivial changes they could've done to make entering text into an Excel cell via a stylus much easier); Office 2013 looks like more of the same.

No really, please do. Otherwise you sound like a fanboi who nitpicks the first thing he finds slightly offensive to the Apple crowd.

<quote>Task switching in particular is great; flicking back and forth between apps is effortless. It makes the iPad, where you either have to bounce between apps via the home screen, or double tap the home button to select from a "taskbar," look like something from a bygone era.</quote>

GordonBX wrote:

but with multitouch gestures that have been available since the introduction of iOS5, you can do a 5-finger swipe left and right to switch between running apps. Not so bygone now eh?

Oh, that's a real zinger there... You really showed the author in that one. So basically you're saying palming the entire screen to move to a recently used app is a step in the right direction? Seems kinda clumsy to me. What about a foot swipe?

I was going to post the same correction but he brought it up first, and how is swiping left or right to cycle between two apps clunkier than swiping in to bring up the app switcher, then selecting an app? Apple has that one too, swipe up with five fingers to reveal the app switcher.

Quote:

The system is a minor evolution of the mechanism used in Windows Phone. Tap in a piece of selectable text and a kind of inverted lollipop appears. Drag the lollipop left or right and it grows to produce another lollipop, with the text between the two lollies being selected. Tap the blob on the end of the stick and cut and paste options appear. If you have something on the clipboard already, tapping the blob also gives you a paste option.

How is this faster than double tapping a word to select in iOS?

I don't mind seeing details accentuated, I quite like the idea of contracts in Win8 and a few of its other nice features, but it almost seems as though you're looking for any possible edge it might have over other mobile operating systems and failing to give the other operating systems their due.

A lot of people are forgetting (maybe not forgetting but failing to mention) the great media server capabilities that Microsoft is baking into Win8. And upgrading for only $40 gets you the equivalent of the Win8 Ultimate (Win8 Pro in this case), I say this is a big win. I never thought I was going to be able to get 2 licenses of Windows for under $100.

For the cost of a DVD-RW (or 4GB+ flash drive)and 35-45 min. of your broadband connection, you can get any distribution of Linux that gives you excellent multimedia server capabilities (Samba, or other network share capabilities), streaming (VLC &/or Xine, etc.) full DVR capabilities (MythTV) if you happen to have a capture card or network tuner (like HDhomerun), nice multimedia front ends (XBMC, etc.) no Digital Restrictions Management (what DRM should be called)... and no extra out-of-pocket co$t$. Now THAT'S a value! You can keep your MS multimedia edition, with it's extra costs and restrictions.

If there's one thing MS is good at it's abandoning their failures. If Win 8 bombs they'll return to their old format or split the touch OS from the desktop OS.

Win8 bombing will probably segment the market a lot more than it is now though.

How much of Vista was abandoned in 7?

Good point. They just slapped lipstick on the pig and called it a day, and slowly cleaned up the internal bloat. No MS OS since WinXP has survived on one of my systems for more than an hour after unboxing. And I have a fair number of touch screen enabled devices,... I can install and completely reconfigure X/K/L/Ubuntu as a touch interface GUI faster (25 min. install + add'l 20 min.) than I could get any WinOS installed (minimum 2.75 hrs. just to install, with service packs, etc., let alone make useable).... If MS wants to compete in the mobile space, they have to be able to get out of their own way. That means lighter OS, better performance. and more ability to configure.

So what you're saying is that you're a nerd, a Linux fanboy, a Microsoft hater, and not the market Microsoft is aiming at. Wake me up when you have a point.

I was kind of hoping there would be some actual relevant info in this article, like how well Windows 8 tablet might work in a domain environment. Instead I get almost two pages on the typing interface. *rolls eyes*

I've got 8 running on an EEE Slate and was surprised at how effective the keyboard is (though I like the one of the iPad and the one of my Transformer Prime just as well)

As for all the people complaining about metro.... I don't get the hate. It took me about 2 hours to get used to it and ultimately I'm as advanced a user as can be in Windows and I haven't had to change my workflows on the desktop even slightly. Otherwise there is simply no reason not to upgrade. Nearly every subsystem in the OS runs more efficiently and provides a much better computing experience to other versions of Windows. Choosing not to upgrade because of the Start screen is silly. Amazing boot times, built in AV, 'Windows Account' integration, faaar less hard disk churn, storage spaces, native usb3, the task manager is amazing, new directx, built in 'easy' restore, built in hyperv, a store that sells applications (yes even non-metro applications), mountable virtual disk, universal hardware acceleration..... there are a hundred things that make it superior to 7. (these features might be new to windows and you can complain about them being late to the party... but the fact remains that 8 has them and 7 doesn't)

Why on earth are Linux users showing up to complain about an OS they hate and will never use regardless of what Microsoft does?

It looks like most things are pretty good, and Windows 8.1 should be able to fix the rest. These idiotic expectations that a change this big is going to work perfectly on first implementation are just haters that gotta hate.

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, I've got decent video drives (wave at JasePow), and I have thousands of times the applications available to Linux (and of course hundreds of times the apps available to Mac).

Played a good game of solitaire lately JasePow? Or maybe Doom for Linux? Did it crash half-way through, and wait while you had to try and track down a sound driver that'd work?

Sorry, but Linux just isn't comparable to, and isn't, a mainstream operating system, regardless of the efforts that have been put in by dozens of companies. It has its uses, but Windows will be staying my main OS and Windows 8 looks to have a lot of promise for a first draft of a BIG change.

If there's one thing MS is good at it's abandoning their failures. If Win 8 bombs they'll return to their old format or split the touch OS from the desktop OS.

Win8 bombing will probably segment the market a lot more than it is now though.

How much of Vista was abandoned in 7?

Good point. They just slapped lipstick on the pig and called it a day, and slowly cleaned up the internal bloat. No MS OS since WinXP has survived on one of my systems for more than an hour after unboxing. And I have a fair number of touch screen enabled devices,... I can install and completely reconfigure X/K/L/Ubuntu as a touch interface GUI faster (25 min. install + add'l 20 min.) than I could get any WinOS installed (minimum 2.75 hrs. just to install, with service packs, etc., let alone make useable).... If MS wants to compete in the mobile space, they have to be able to get out of their own way. That means lighter OS, better performance. and more ability to configure.

This is a good point. I think their whole philosophy of "ship broken stuff now; patch later" is somewhat their undoing right now in the increasingly mobile space. If I have to spend 10 hours downloading hundreds of megs of updates to a mobile device over a 3G or even a mediocre broadband connection, I am one pissed consumer. Windows was able to compromise quality in the desktop space because people expect desktops to be rebooted frequently and have slow patching and all of that. In the mobile space, the game is changed, and shipping with major defects is a tougher problem. I know many people who try Android phones because they like the price, and then a year later switch to the iPhone and don't look back because of bloat and fragmentation. I could see something similar happening with Windows tablets and the iPad.

Both of the guys talking about five-finger swipes are wrong. Swiping left or right between apps (or up, to bring up the multitasking bar) requires only four fingers. The only five finger gesture I'm aware of on the iPad is the five finger pinch to take you back to the home screen.

Interestingly, these operations obviate the need for the home button, although having a couple hardware buttons if for no other reason than being able to force diagnostics or reboot if the tablet is locked up is almost certainly a good idea.

A lot of people are forgetting (maybe not forgetting but failing to mention) the great media server capabilities that Microsoft is baking into Win8. And upgrading for only $40 gets you the equivalent of the Win8 Ultimate (Win8 Pro in this case), I say this is a big win. I never thought I was going to be able to get 2 licenses of Windows for under $100.

For the cost of a DVD-RW (or 4GB+ flash drive)and 35-45 min. of your broadband connection, you can get any distribution of Linux that gives you excellent multimedia server capabilities (Samba, or other network share capabilities), streaming (VLC &/or Xine, etc.) full DVR capabilities (MythTV) if you happen to have a capture card or network tuner (like HDhomerun), nice multimedia front ends (XBMC, etc.) no Digital Restrictions Management (what DRM should be called)... and no extra out-of-pocket co$t$. Now THAT'S a value! You can keep your MS multimedia edition, with it's extra costs and restrictions.

Can you play a BluRay on it? Or a DVD movie, for that matter? Oops, didn't pay the licence fee. Of course, you can always steal your content and claim you're doing it to screw big business, but excusing it doesn't make it right. You just don't seem to understand the difference between a consumer OS and a nerd OS.

Task switching in particular is great; flicking back and forth between apps is effortless. It makes the iPad, where you either have to bounce between apps via the home screen, or double tap the home button to select from a "taskbar," look like something from a bygone era.

So, the PalmOS task switching? Always thought of it as a neat feature. My Galaxy nexus I just got has a dedicated application switcher button which is nice.

so.. what about the Group Policy and management components of Win8? as an IT admin/desktop admin thats all i care about. How about MDT and Sysprepping win8 images? Win7 made our lives so much harder in regards to image deployments and creating systems w/standardized user profile setups.

it seems microsoft forgets that us in the corp environment still need to manage / deploy devices/apps and the newer tools just don't live up to the XP era ones. looks pretty but i can't stand the metro on a non-touch laptop or desktop. for now, seems like another Windows ME/Vista in the making..

Both of the guys talking about five-finger swipes are wrong. Swiping left or right between apps (or up, to bring up the multitasking bar) requires only four fingers. The only five finger gesture I'm aware of on the iPad is the five finger pinch to take you back to the home screen.

Interestingly, these operations obviate the need for the home button, although having a couple hardware buttons if for no other reason than being able to force diagnostics or reboot if the tablet is locked up is almost certainly a good idea.

Looks like you're right, cannot believe I missed that, though actually (just tried it) you can use four fingers to pinch to get back to the home screen too.

so.. what about the Group Policy and management components of Win8? as an IT admin/desktop admin thats all i care about. How about MDT and Sysprepping win8 images? Win7 made our lives so much harder in regards to image deployments and creating systems w/standardized user profile setups.

it seems microsoft forgets that us in the corp environment still need to manage / deploy devices/apps and the newer tools just don't live up to the XP era ones. looks pretty but i can't stand the metro on a non-touch laptop or desktop. for now, seems like another Windows ME/Vista in the making..

Not my experience in sysprepping Windows 7, but for Windows 8 it's the same as Windows 7 with a bunch of new Administrative Templates for Group Policy to control the new features.